Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE, FRCP (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British neurologist, naturalist and author who spent his professional life in the United States. He believed that the brain is the "most incredible thing in the universe" and therefore important to study.[1] He became widely known for writing best-selling case histories about his patients' disorders, with some of his books adapted for stage and film.[2][3]

Sacks was the author of numerous best-selling books, mostly collections of case studies of people with neurological disorders. His writings have been featured in a wide range of media; the New York Times called him a "poet laureate of contemporary medicine", and "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century".[6] His books include a wealth of narrative detail about his experiences with patients, and how they coped with their conditions, often illuminating how the normal brain deals with perception, memory and individuality.

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Sacks was born in Cricklewood, London, England, the youngest of four children born to Jewish parents: Samuel Sacks, a Lithuanian Jewish[7][8] physician (died June 1990),[9] and Muriel Elsie Landau, one of the first female surgeons in England (died 1972).[2] Sacks had an extremely large extended family of scientists, physicians and other highly gifted individuals, including the director and writer Jonathan Lynn[10] and first cousins, the Israeli statesman Abba Eban[11] and the Nobel Laureate Robert Aumann.[12]

When Sacks was six years old, he and his brother Michael were evacuated from London to escape the Blitz, and sent to a boarding school in the Midlands where he remained until 1943.[2] Unknown to his family, at the school, he and his brother Michael "... subsisted on meagre rations of turnips and beetroot and suffered cruel punishments at the hands of a sadistic headmaster".[13] This is detailed in his first autobiography, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood.[14] Later, he attended St Paul's School in London. Beginning at his return home at the age of 10 from the cruel boarding school experience, under his Uncle Dave's tutelage he became an intensely focused amateur chemist, as recalled in Uncle Tungsten. During adolescence he became intensely interested in biology and learned to share his parents' enthusiasm for medicine. He entered the Queen's College, Oxford in 1951,[2] obtaining a BA degree in physiology and biology in 1956.[15]

Although not required, Sacks chose to stay on for an additional year to undertake research, after he had taken a course by Hugh Macdonald Sinclair. Sacks recalls, "I had been seduced by a series of vivid lectures on the history of medicine" and nutrition, given by Sinclair. Sacks adds, "And now, in Sinclair's lectures, it was the history of physiology, the ideas and personalities of physiologists, which came to life."[15] Sacks then became involved with the school's Laboratory of Human Nutrition under Sinclair. Sacks focused his research on Jamaica ginger, a toxic and commonly abused drug known to cause irreversible nerve damage.[15] After devoting months to research, he was disappointed by the lack of help and guidance he received from Sinclair.[15] Sacks wrote up an account of his research findings but stopped working on the subject. As a result he became depressed: "I felt myself sinking into a state of quiet but in some ways agitated despair."[15] His tutor at Queen's and his parents, seeing his lowered emotional state, suggested he extricate himself from academic studies for a period. His parents then suggested he spend the summer of 1955 living on Israeli kibbutzEin HaShofet, where the physical labour would help him.[15][16]

Sacks would later describe his experience on the kibbutz as an "anodyne to the lonely, torturing months in Sinclair's lab". He said he lost 60 pounds (27 kg) from his previously overweight body, as a result of the healthy, hard physical labour he performed there. He spent time travelling around the country, with time scuba diving at the Red Sea port city of Eilat, and began to reconsider his future: "I wondered again, as I had wondered when I first went to Oxford, whether I really wanted to become a doctor. I had become very interested in neurophysiology, but I also loved marine biology ... But I was 'cured' now; it was time to return to medicine, to start clinical work, seeing patients in London."[15]

"My pre-med studies in anatomy and physiology at Oxford had not prepared me in the least for real medicine. Seeing patients, listening to them, trying to enter (or at least imagine) their experiences and predicaments, feeling concerned for them, taking responsibility for them, was quite new to me ... It was not just a question of diagnosis and treatment; much graver questions could present themselves—questions about the quality of life and whether life was even worth living in some circumstances."

Sacks began medical school at Oxford University in 1956 and for the next two and half years, he took courses in medicine, surgery, orthopaedics, paediatrics, neurology, psychiatry, dermatology, infectious diseases, obstetrics, and various other disciplines. During his years as a student, he helped home deliver a number of babies. He received an MA degree and BM BCh degree in 1958.[17] He qualified for his internship that December, which would begin at Middlesex Hospital the following month. "My eldest brother, Marcus, had trained at the Middlesex," he said, "and now I was following his footsteps."[15]

Before beginning his internship, he said he first wanted some actual hospital experience to gain more confidence and he took a job at a hospital in St Albans, where his mother had worked as an emergency surgeon during the war. He then did his six-month internship at Middlesex Hospital's medical unit, followed by another six months in its neurological unit. He completed his internship in June 1960, but was uncertain about his future.[15]

Sacks left Britain and flew to Montreal, Canada on 9 July 1960, his 27th birthday. He visited the Montreal Neurological Institute and the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), telling them that he wanted to be a pilot. After some interviews and checking his background, they told him he would be best in medical research. Dr. Taylor, the head medical officer, told him, "You are clearly talented and we would love to have you, but I am not sure about your motives for joining." He was told to travel for a few months and reconsider. He used the next three months to travel across Canada and deep into the Canadian Rockies, which he described in his personal journal, later published as Canada: Pause, 1960.[15]

He then made his way to the United States,[13] completing a residency in Neurology at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco, and fellowships in Neurology and Psychiatry at UCLA.[18] While there, Sacks became a lifelong close friend of poet Thom Gunn, saying he loved his wild imagination, his strict control, and perfect poetic form.[2] During much of his time at UCLA, he lived in a rented house in Topanga Canyon[19] and experimented with various recreational drugs. He described some of his experiences in a 2012 New Yorker article,[20] and in his book Hallucinations.[21] After moving to New York City, he said that an amphetamine-facilitated epiphany that came as he read a book by the 19th century migraine physician Edward Liveing inspired him to chronicle his observations on neurological diseases and oddities; to become the "Liveing of our Time".[20]

Sacks's work at Beth Abraham Hospital helped provide the foundation on which the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF) is built; Sacks was an honorary medical advisor.[24] The Institute honoured Sacks in 2000 with its first Music Has Power Award.[25] The IMNF again bestowed a Music Has Power Award on him in 2006 to commemorate "his 40 years at Beth Abraham and honour his outstanding contributions in support of music therapy and the effect of music on the human brain and mind".[26]

Sacks's work is featured in a "broader range of media than those of any other contemporary medical author"[32] and in 1990, the New York Times wrote he "has become a kind of poet laureate of contemporary medicine".[33]

Sacks considered his literary style to have grown out of the tradition of 19th century "clinical anecdotes", a literary style that included detailed narrative case histories. He also counted among his inspirations the case histories of the Russian neuropsychologist A. R. Luria, who became a close friend through correspondence between 1973 and 1977, until Dr. Luria died.[34][35] After the publication of his first book Migraine in 1970, a review by his close friend W. H. Auden encouraged Sacks to adapt his writing style to "be metaphorical, be mythical, be whatever you need".[36]

Sacks described his cases with a wealth of narrative detail, concentrating on the experiences of the patient (in the case of his A Leg to Stand On, the patient was himself). The patients he described were often able to adapt to their situation in different ways despite the fact that their neurological conditions were usually considered incurable.[37] His book Awakenings, upon which the 1990 feature film of the same name is based, describes his experiences using the new drug levodopa on Beth Abraham Hospital post-encephalitic patients.[5]Awakenings was also the subject of the first documentary made (in 1974) for the British television series Discovery.

In his book A Leg to Stand On he wrote about the consequences of a near-fatal accident he had at age 41 in 1974, a year after the publication of Awakenings, when he fell off a cliff and severely injured his left leg while mountaineering alone above Hardangerfjord, Norway.[38]

In November 2012 Sacks's book Hallucinations was published. In it he examined why ordinary people can sometimes experience hallucinations and challenges the stigma associated with the word. He explained: "Hallucinations don't belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness or injury."[42] He also considers the less well known Charles Bonnet syndrome, sometimes found in people who have lost their eyesight. The book was described by Entertainment Weekly as: "Elegant... An absorbing plunge into a mystery of the mind."[43]

Sacks sometimes faced criticism in the medical and disability studies communities. Arthur K. Shapiro for instance, an expert on Tourette syndrome, said Sacks's work was "idiosyncratic" and relied too much on anecdotal evidence in his writings.[44] Researcher Makoto Yamaguchi thought Sacks's mathematical explanations, in his study of the numerically gifted savant twins (in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), are irrelevant.[45] Although Sacks has been characterised as a "compassionate" writer and doctor,[46][47][48] others have felt that he exploited his subjects.[49][50] Sacks was called "the man who mistook his patients for a literary career" by British academic and disability rights activist Tom Shakespeare,[51] and one critic called his work "a high-brow freak show".[49] Sacks responded, "I would hope that a reading of what I write shows respect and appreciation, not any wish to expose or exhibit for the thrill ... but it's a delicate business."[52]

He is also the author of The Mind's Eye, Oaxaca Journal, On the Move (his second autobiography), and many articles in The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.

Sacks received the position "Columbia Artist" from Columbia University in 2007, a post that was created specifically for him and that gave him unconstrained access to the university, regardless of department or discipline.[67]

Sacks never married and lived alone for most of his life.[52] He declined to share interpersonal details until late in his life. He addressed his homosexuality for the first time in his 2015 autobiography On the Move: A Life.[15] During his early career he indulged in:

"staggering bouts of pharmacological experimentation, underwent a fierce regimen of bodybuilding at Muscle Beach (for a time he held a California record, after he performed a full squat with 600 pounds across his shoulders), and racked up more than 100,000 leather-clad miles on his motorcycle. And then one day he gave it all up—the drugs, the sex, the motorcycles, the bodybuilding."[71]

Celibate for about 35 years since his forties, in 2008 he began a friendship with writer and New York Times contributor Bill Hayes, that evolved into a committed long-term partnership in a shared home.[72] He noted in a 2001 interview that severe shyness—which he described as "a disease"—had been a lifelong impediment to his personal interactions.[32]

Sacks swam almost every day for nearly his entire life, beginning when his swimming-champion father started him swimming as a neonate. He especially became well-known for swimming when he lived in the City Island section of the Bronx, as he would routinely swim around the entire island.

Sacks had prosopagnosia, known popularly as "face blindness",[73] which he discussed at length in a 2010 New Yorker piece.[74] This disability, which prevented him from recognising even his own reflection, contributed to his shyness. His eldest brother Markus also had the condition.

In December 2014 metastases from the ocular tumour were discovered in his liver and brain.[77] Sacks announced this development in a February New York Times op-ed piece and estimated his remaining time in "months". He expressed his intent to "live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can". He added: "I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight."[77]

Sacks died from the disease on 30 August 2015 at his home in Manhattan at the age of 82.[4]

^Sacks, Oliver (1996) [1995]. "Preface". An Anthropologist on Mars (New ed.). London: Picador. xiii–xviii. ISBN0-330-34347-5. The sense of the brain's remarkable plasticity, its capacity for the most striking adaptations, not least in the special (and often desperate) circumstances of neural or sensory mishap, has come to dominate my own perception of my patients and their lives.

^Sacks, Oliver (6 July 2013). "The Joy of Old Age. (No Kidding.)". The New York Times.|access-date= requires |url= (help)